Well maybe you should stop. It's a bad habit. You can never know what they are thinking, you can only imagine.

Hey, I'm a bullshitter remember. This stuff's my bread and butter.

Sure, when a guy gets up 10 minutes before the train arrives it could be because he was seated next to an indescribable hottie who kept on accidentally rubbing up against his thigh and now he's just realised that he's got to go and knock one out before his stop or he won't be able to concentrate on his afternoon presentation about the application of forensic science to mass graves in Bosnia. More often than not, though, he's just the sort of person who gets up 10 minutes before the train arrives.

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Describing people as "the sort of person" who does anything is just as fatuous.

Maybe they got up becuase they need a piss. Maybe they got up becuase they're keen to get where theyre going, or they're running late, or for whatever reason they just can't bear to keep still in any longer.

In imagining who they are or what they are thinking, you're just creating a comfort blanket for yourself, an insulation between the real world and the world as you would, self-justifyingly, like it to be.

As I said, it's a bad habit. Deal with what people do, not on what you imagine is going on in their heads. you can never learn anything from that sort of speculation, you can only live in an echo chamber of own making.

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Describing people as "the sort of person" who does anything is just as fatuous.

I quite agree, but until there's a proper word for it I'll have to settle for that.

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Maybe they got up becuase they need a piss. Maybe they got up becuase they're keen to get where theyre going, or they're running late, or for whatever reason they just can't bear to keep still in any longer.

Well yes, it's the keen to get where they're going/can't bear to keep still ones that I dislike.

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In imagining who they are or what they are thinking, you're just creating a comfort blanket for yourself, an insulation between the real world and the world as you would, self-justifyingly, like it to be. As I said, it's a bad habit. Deal with what people do, not on what you imagine is going on in their heads. you can never learn anything from that sort of speculation, you can only live in an echo chamber of own making.

Aren't you imagining what I'm thinking right now?

It's like the story about the Chinese philosophers watching the fish - "How happy they are, swimming in their pond." "You're not a fish, how can you know whether they're happy or not?" "You're not me, how can you know whether I know whether they're happy or not?"

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Originally Posted by Zichao

I quite agree, but until there's a proper word for it I'll have to settle for that.

there is. IUt's "projection".

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Well yes, it's the keen to get where they're going/can't bear to keep still ones that I dislike.

Why do you even care? Haven;t you got better thiongs to do with your life?

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Aren't you imagining what I'm thinking right now?

No. I'm responding to what you actually said.

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"You're not me, how can you know whether I know whether they're happy or not?"

I can know becuase I know you're not a fish.

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there is. IUt's "projection".

I was thinking more along the lines of "worry-wart who doesn't think stuff through properly". It doesn't really trip off the tongue, though.

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Why do you even care? Haven;t you got better thiongs to do with your life?

I don't really care (unless they're sitting next to me and oblige me to stand in the corridor while they shift eighteen tonnes of wordsearch books and wetwipes out into the luggage rack), it was just an observation.

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I can know becuase I know you're not a fish.

I might be a Temple Grandin style fish whisperer with quasi mystic powers.

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Originally Posted by Zichao

I might be a Temple Grandin style fish whisperer with quasi mystic powers.

I'll consider the possibility on the day someone collects their million dollars by showing off their mystic powers to James Randi.

Well I said "quasi". Do you think that Temple Grandin's a psychic too?

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I didn;t know who she was, I assumed you were referring to some anime character. Now that I do, no I don' think theres anything mystical going on, but I also point out that her claims are functionally untestable.

There are still practical limits to how alien a mindset any human can adopt. I'm not even convinced that a concept like "happiness" makes sense beyond mammals, for example. Nor are humans equipped to process the electoromagnetic senses of fish. So my money's still on anthropomorphic projection rather than real insight.